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Samsung has announced its new mobile payments system, unsurprisingly called Samsung Pay. It will apparently only work at first with the company’s latest flagship phones, the new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. Those phones launch on April 10; Samsung says the payments system will go live in the second half of this year.

In terms of managing payments in retail stores, Samsung Pay boasts one major advantage over Apple’s competing system. While Apple Pay requires near-field communication (NFC) pads to function, Samsung Pay is already compatible with any terminal with a standard magnetic stripe credit card reader—or with NFC if the business has already adopted it.

Samsung is building its pay system on technology it acquired when it bought LoopPay, which had a system it said was already compatible with 90% of existing credit card stripe-reading terminals.

At the moment, though, it doesn’t sound like Samsung Pay will offer much, if any, functionality inside apps. Apple, by contrast, offers a software development kit and other resources to developers who want to incorporate its payment system into their apps.

For security, Samsung Pay relies on Samsung KNOX, the company’s in-house end-to-end secure mobile platform, as well as fingerprint scanning and “advanced tokenization,” the company said in a press release. “Tokenization” means that transactions will use a one-time-use token instead of your credit card number for identification.

The latest variation on the “smart lock”—one that secures your front door until you open it with your smartphone—is here. Candy House’s Sesame adds a few new twists, including an inexpensive starting price (though only for those who snap up the few remaining offers in its Kickstarter), simple assembly and functions that will unlock your door via a special knock or secret passphrase.

The smart locking system launched on Kickstarter Wednesday. More than 570 people backed it on the first day, lifting it to 87% of its $100,000 funding goal. As of writing , the project has 1,100 backers and has raised almost $170,000.

Door, Lock Thyself

Smart locks are not a new concept. There are dozens of options on the market today. As with any new technology, some smart locks are prone to glitches such as jamming or inconsistent connectivity.

Many are expensive, too. The August smart lock, available in Apple stores as well as online, sells for $250.

Sesame, by contrast, costs early Kickstarter backers a mere $90 for its most stripped down model. Those deals are almost gone, though, and once they are, the Sesame will set you back $150. Of course, you can’t get it yet; it won’t start shipping until late April.

Open Sesame

No-tools installation is one of the Sesame’s big selling points, and it does appear to be pretty straightforward. You basically put the Sesame device over a deadbolt latch using a 3M adhesive strip that comes with the kit. You can put it on at any angle, and the company says the mechanism can fit almost any deadbolt in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

Whether you feel good about trusting the security of your home to a gadget that’s basically stuck to your door with double-sided tape is a separate question. Though the upside here seems to be that if the Sesame comes unstuck, you can always use a regular key—though you might be stuck yourself if you’ve decided to leave your keys at home, as the project explicitly urges backers to do.

You’ll control the lock via the Sesame app on your smartphone. That will let the smart lock know who you are and what you’d like the lock to do.

Who’s That Unlocking At My Door?

Sesame connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth. You can also pair it via Bluetooth to an optional Wi-Fi bridge that will let you control the lock remotely from virtually anywhere. That would also let you grant access to others, so you could let in a relative or a sitter without having to hand them a key.

The smart lock also notifies the owner whenever someone tries to access your home using Sesame, whether they’re on the list or not. You also have the ability to store and review log records which document the people that have triggered the lock, and when they did so.

Don’t call Pebble’s new smartwatch platform a reboot. That implies scrapping the old and ushering in the new. Consider the new software and its new companion product, dubbed Pebble Time, a progression of the Pebbles that came before.

The old models aren’t going anywhere. They’re just going to be joined by something a bit flashier.

That flash comes from the color display, on-screen animations and a brand-new microphone—all stuffed into a device that’s 20% thinner, founder Eric Migicovsky told me. Even better, he says the device “still has a 7-day battery life,” like the previous Pebble watches.

There’s a lot to unpack with the announcements, both for consumers and the software developers that make up Pebble’s life blood. Its existing ecosystem is populated by thousands of watch faces and apps, and by the company’s count, it has sold a million watches so far. To evolve, Pebble has to move carefully—updating its technology and products without leaving its existing customers and developers in the lurch.

Here’s what Pebble has in store for its next phase.

Time For A New Smartwatch

First things first: The new Pebble Time isn’t available yet. In fact, Pebble will once again take orders via Kickstarter, with the first hardware shipping in May. (Details below.)

But expect some surprises when you do see it. “This is the largest change we’ve made to our product line since we launched on Kickstarter the first time,” Migicovsky said, referring to his 2012 campaign that raised more than $10 million.

The original Pebble featured a two-tone e-paper display, similar to those found on Kindle e-readers. Such screens are legible in daylight with minimal battery drain. Although basic, they were somewhat charmingly so.

Now those charms have worn thin—particularly as rivals emerge with beautiful high-definition displays. Pebble Time now comes armed with a palette too. There’s still no comparison with HD displays, of course, but the color e-paper screen still preserves the battery, allowing the display to stay on at all times. It also helps the smoother animations Pebble now offers, which look more appealing in color than in grayscale.

On the inside, the biggest change is a new microphone.

I previously wondered if Pebble would integrate speech features; practically all of the major smartwatches do, and the Apple Watch will, thanks to Siri. Now Pebble Time will be the company’s first model to support voice. The device will support five languages to start—including English, French and Spanish, with others, such as Chinese, planned in the future.

Making calls from the wrist, however, is not on the menu. “We’ve decided not to offer that functionality,” said Migicovsky. “There’s no speaker on the watch either. We did it mainly to emphasize what the best use-case is in the early days—being able to send quick voice responses or take voice notes.”

The team is working on the ability to send short audio clips, though, and creative app developers might be able to use speech in other ways. They’ll “get an open API in the future, so that anyone can build apps on top of that,” he said.

The new Pebble—like the old one—will still last about a week, Migicovsky claims. (In my own real-world experience, the original Pebble tends to go for roughly 5 days between charges.) Of course, your results may vary. If you run animation-intensive applications all the time, Migicovsky admits you’ll probably zap that battery.

Pebble Time will also remain fully water-resistant—no small feat, considering it has a microphone—and comes with a sensor array that includes an accelerometer (for movement) and a magnetometer (for a compass).

On the outside, the watch features a curved body to fit the wrist, rounded corners, a Gorilla Glass display, a stainless steel bezel, a new hardware port that allows sensor and fitness accessory makers to connect directly with the device, and a silicon watchband sized at a standard 22mm, so people can change it out easily using the quick release pin in the strap.

OK, Pebble: Notify Me

One of the Pebble’s longstanding annoyances has been the number of button presses necessary just to get to certain apps and other functions. The new software aims to improve on that—in part by shifting away from a focus on apps to one that highlights chronological notifications.

“[The smartwatch] has notifications, apps and watch faces,” Migicovsky. “It’s good and simple, but when you add more apps, features and notifications, it gets overwhelming.” This is the vexing problem of growing an open platform that could bring forth hundreds, even thousands, of functions. But without an efficient way of navigating that, things can quickly become a frustrating mess, especially on a teeny tiny screen sitting on your wrist.

Ultimately, Pebble decided on a structure befitting a watch: a timeline. “Instead of having individual apps, we’ve extracted the information from those apps that are relevant to you in your normal day,” Migicovsky said. The new Pebble software now pulls in data based on chronology for contextually aware features. Users can call up activities that just happened, future events and data relevant at the present time by pressing respective up, down and middle buttons on the watch.

The information can include yesterday’s step count, tomorrow’s appointments and the current weather, as well as travel plans, reminders, news, reservations and other data.

“You see the past view, and you can scroll up to see what just happened,” said Migicovsky. “The really cool animations is what we’re calling the present feed, which is the new app menu.” Once within a particular area, users can scroll through different types of data. “Thanks to a new widget view, each app can actually display a little bit of information in the menu screen, so users don’t have to actually have to go over to the app itself, he said.”

The new software will come with a new software developers kit, though Pebble hasn’t announced a specific date yet. But it will be available soon, he said—a matter of “days or weeks, not months.” When it arrives, developers will be able to support the new Timeline, the new color screen, animations and voice features.

According to Migicovsky, Pebble’s new Android Wear support will extend to the new operating system, and even Web developers will get access to Timeline. “They no longer have to write apps that run on Pebble, and they no longer have to run Android or iOS apps,” he said. “They can write it entirely in Web languages, and interact with an OAuth-based, http end client.”

The software will also be backward compatible, running the 6,500 apps and watch faces currently in Pebble’s app store. As for current Pebble smartwatches—including the original plastic versions and the premium steel model—the company is working to bring the new OS to those older devices.

Pebble returns to Kickstarter to launch the new Pebble Time beginning Tuesday with pledges starting at $159. (After the campaign, the full retail price will be $199.) The device—available in red, white or black—supports iPhones, including the 4s and newer models running current versions of iOS 8, plus Android smartphones running version 4.0 and later, including devices by Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG, Google, Motorola, Xiaomi and others. The campaign will end at the end of March and begins shipping at the end of May.

With the Apple Watch’s debut in April, smartwatch customers will soon have a bevy of choices. But that suits Migicovsky just fine. “I think it’s going to be extraordinarily exciting,” he said. “There’s going to be a ton of attention in this space.”

Since the European Search Awards is quickly approach, I sought out the expertise of returning judge Gianluca Fiorelli to learn more about the judging process and to discuss the prestige behind these awards. Now going into its fourth year, the winners of the 2015 European Search Awards will be announced in Berlin, Germany on Wednesday, April 22nd, with many of the continent’s foremost digital and content marketers expected to be in attendance. I will be there covering the event on behalf of SEJ. In this interview with Gianluca, I got his first hand perspective as a judge on what it takes to win a […]

How Long Does SEO Take To Start Working?ForbesSEO today is increasingly driven by natural language search, that is, people doing searches that are more like normal questions than two or three keywords. This is happening because people are using tools like Siri and Google Now to speak their …

6 Smart SEO Steps to Take in 2015Business 2 CommunityHow is your organization kicking off the new year? Are you hammering away at your annual marketing plan? Perhaps you're course-correcting from a less-than-stellar performance from one of your KPIs. Maybe 2015 will be the year you'll finally start …and more »

Last year, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich sent a big virtual 3D whale over the audience at the Consumer Electronics Show. At his keynote this time around, he made a whale of an announcement instead: On Tuesday, he pledged a whopping $300 million to support women and diversity in technology over the next five years.

Krzanich also publicly announced that Intel has set the goal of reaching “full representation at all levels in our company’s workforce by 2020.” That includes everyone from the mail room to the C-suite.

That will be no easy feat. Intel employs more than 100,000 people across its organization, and more than half of that workforce skews Caucasian and male. In the upper levels of its management team, women only account for two of its 15 top-level execs and two of its 10 board directors. “We’re going to hold our leaders accountable, tying their pay to our progress,” Krzanich said.

It’s commendable that Intel would publicly lay out its internal mission, as well as pledge support with a hefty dollar figure attached to it—especially in front of journalists who will surely follow up on both.

At last year’s CES, removing conflict minerals from its production pipeline was Intel’s big cause. But after a year that saw female game developers harassed and victimized online, and intensely disappointing racial and gender diversity numbers issuing forth from one major tech company after another, Intel clearly pegged this as its new cause célèbre.

The reason? Well, possibly because of the unfairness of it all, or maybe because it would bring a broader base of talent and perspectives. But there’s also a decent chance it has something to do with that GamerGate kerfuffle a few months back relating to the heat Intel suffered over an advertisement. Krzanich singled out GamerGate as one of negative forces Intel wants to rail against.

SEO still matters. Jean Dion recently wrote a piece detailing why search engine optimization is still very much on the plate. You still want to use properly placed keywords, draft blog posts for people not bots, and work to build your reputation to earn legitimate links. But, there is a lot more to SEO. See what goes into a post today, as Ethan Lyon explained on the SEER Interactive blog. There’s a whole analysis of “Who, why, what, and when” just like it is for full-blown product development – all for a blog post? Welcome to 2015 and beyond! It’s clear that well-written content still […]